A New Semester

We are now three weeks into the new semester. My first semester here was like hugging a tornado, there was so much to learn. Although I had taught undergraduate through doctoral, it was never as a member of a university. This is certainly a new experience since my normal career is with industry. Still, my purpose here has been fulfilled, to bring new ideas and ways of thinking about technology.

The department chair asked me to teach two courses: neural networks / fuzzy logic, and distributed systems. These are presented as a combination of theory and practice in the hopes that the students will take away usable skills for their own careers. As in all classes, there is a range of students. At the end of two weeks one could already see the grade curve forming. My main effort is to get the hump of that curve to move to the right.

Generally, the culture of Zimbabwe does not put as much emphasis on starting a meeting on time as we do in the United States. However, each of my lectures starts on time. Students who arrive late have to talk to their fellow students to get what was said. But, everyone has copies of the course slides and reading materials. The slides are my own and the readings are from open-access sources. Needless to say, there are students who, even after three weeks, do not have a clue. These are the ones who show up late, if they show up at all, or who spend their time looking at their phones instead of paying attention. Just like in the States too, there are students who disrupt the class with private conversations. The big difference here is that the university does not expect lecturers to wet-nurse students. They get the grade they earn. It is also possible for me to have a disruptive student removed from the class. That is very different from my experiences teaching in the States.

Let us not focus on the low-end of the performance-ethic curve. There are many many solid students. They are a joy to teach. They ask good questions and offer intelligent discussion. Usually, these students hesitate to raise their hand during class. So, we have a lot of Q/A/D during lab sessions, or they come to my office. That is fine by me. The goal is to teach in such a way that students become well educated and as ready to start their careers as we can make them. I await their course projects with great anticipation.

This is a typical classroom. 95% of them open to the outside and are not contained within a larger building. They are constructed either of brick or the pre-fab material shown here. Mostly, there is no air conditioning or fans. These rooms are very hot, like an oven, during the summer. During the Spring and Fall it gets better, but not by much.

Inside, students arrange furniture to their convenience. The lecturer typically stands at the front of the class and lectures from there or moves about the room. Projectors are hard to come by so I do not bother trying to get one. Instead, I simply tell the class which slide I am on. That appears to work fine but it is not possible to point to anything on a slide while I am talking. Most classrooms have a black or white board so that pictures or diagrams can be drawn to emphasize a point.

Although lecture and lab times are serious, we do have a bit of fun now and then. We gather together for a soda, discussion, and socializing whenever we can.